Snow and hail at L.A. City Hall

THIS IS UNUSUAL — Snow flurries and a violent 10-minute hailstorm laid a white canopy over most of Los Angeles yesterday. This scene was taken at First and Spring Sts., where snow and hail left a patchwork of “ice floes” on streets and City Hall lawn.

A story in the next morning’s Los Angeles Times reported:

Punctuating a day of steady rain, a 10-minute hailstorm, accompanied by snow flurries in some sections, descended on the city at 4:30 p.m.

The hailstones, some as large as good-sized peas, piled up on cars and gutters, completely covering the streets.

Streetcars wore canopies of white and in the hilly sections small “icebergs” of accumulated hail flowed down the streets in the runoff water of the previous rain.

Lawns around public buildings in the Civic Center and elsewhere turned to white under their ice mantle, keeping the glistening coat until washed away by later rains.

This photo was published on the front page of the Feb. 21, 1944 Los Angeles Times.